I AM MONOGAMY PERSON!

MONOGAMY refers to the state of having only one mate at any one time; the term is applied to the social behavior of some animals, and to a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction


ASPECT OF MONOGAMY:

• Social monogamy refers to two persons/creatures who live together, have sex with each other, and cooperate in acquiring basic resources such as food, clothes, and money.
• Sexual monogamy refers to two persons/creatures who remain sexually exclusive with each other and have no outside sex partners.
• Genetic monogamy refers to two partners that only have offspring with each other.
• Marital monogamy refers to marriages of only two people

Evolutionary history of monogamy

Determining when monogamy evolved in the human lineage is an extremely heated debate with differing views from within the field of paleoanthropology and from genetic studies. Ultimately, there are two prevailing views on the evolutionary history of monogamy in humans: monogamy evolved very early on in our unique lineage or monogamy did not evolve until much more recently (less than 20,000 years ago). Paleoanthropological estimates of the evolution of monogamy are primarily based on the level of sexual dimorphism seen in the fossil record because, in general, reduced male-male competition seen in monogamous mating systems result in reduced sexual dimorphism. According to Reno et al., the sexual dimorphism of Australopithecus afarensis (a human ancestor approximately from 3.9–3.0 million years ago) was within the modern human range, as based on dental and postcranial morphology. Although very careful not to say that this indicates monogamy as the mating system of early hominids, the authors do say that the reduced levels of sexual dimorphism seen in the body size of A. afarensis “do not imply that monogamy is any less probable than polygyny”. However, Gordon, Green and Richmond claim that, in examining postcranial remains, A. afarensis is more sexually dimorphic than modern humans and even chimps with levels closer to those of orangutans and gorillas. Furthermore, Homo habilis (from approximately 2.3 mya) is the most sexually dimorphic early hominid. Plavcan and van Schaik conclude their examination of this controversy by stating that, overall, sexual dimorphism in australopithecines is not indicative of any behavioral implications or mating systems. The genetic evidence for the evolution of monogamy in humans is more complex but much more straightforward. While female effective population size (the number of individuals successfully producing offspring and contributing to the gene pool), as indicated by mitochondrial-DNA evidence, increased around the time of human (not hominid) expansion out of Africa (about 80,000–100,000 years ago), male effective population size, as indicated by Y-chromosome evidence, did not increase until 18,000 years ago, which coincides with the advent of agriculture.

Although, scientists discuss the evolution of monogamy in humans as if it is the prevailing mating strategy among Homo sapiens, only approximately 17.8% (100) of 563 societies sampled in Murdock’s Atlas of World Cultures has any form of monogamy. Therefore, “genetic monogamy appears to be extremely rare in humans,” and “social monogamy is not common, … often reduc[ing] to serial polygyny in a biological sense”. This means that monogamy is not now and probably never was the predominant mating system among the hominid lineage